


Consequences

by CrabOfDoom



Series: Breath After Breath [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XV
Genre: AU, Child Soldier, Intersex, NPC Death, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 05:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10892910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: "In a game of no consequences, why are you still playing the 'good side'?"





	Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> Ficlet inspired by the writing prompt in the description. Originally posted on my tumblr

“ _Excuse me?”_   Safay’s tone was flat and icy; half offended to be spoken to so casually, and half merely… confused. That wasn’t an accusation he’d ever heard before, during these exercises.

The question came from one of the older, brawnier men who kept insisting that they were Safay’s ‘superiors’. ‘Superior’, indeed. Safay was only fourteen, and already taller. Already a master sergeant. Whatever superiority there was, it was not going to last long. At least most of them had stopped expecting him to call them ‘sir’.

The mustache beneath the Niflheim helmet insisted on an attempt to get into Safay’s face, despite the inches of difference that weren’t in its owner’s favor.

“This mission’s objective is to overtake the town’s base of operations, as quickly as possible.”

“… yeah?” Safay shrugged in response. Hadn’t that been what he was doing? It appeared that the mustache didn’t concur.

“So, explain why every civilian you’ve passed is still alive!”

Safay blinked, and looked behind himself at the gently winding dirt street he’d just covered. Old men pushing carts and women sweeping doorsteps kept at their work, just as he’d left them, if occasional glitches in the databanks and power supply sent odd, blank ripples through their holographic bodies.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Safay asked. “This terrain is randomly generated, right? So, where’s the base? If we’re gonna overtake it as quick as we can, we’ve gotta _ask_ someone.”

“And just leave him free to warn the town’s forces?!”

“How fast do you think that old man’s gonna move?” Safay asked, as his arm swept back to gesture toward a very slowly retreating illusion. “Faster than _me?_  Nah.”

“That target knows you’re here and now knows where you’re going!” the mustache countered.

“I assessed the situation and the present dangers,” Safay spoke over him. His voice didn’t rise often, but when it did, it boomed. The mustache reared back, just noticeably. “He told me what I needed to know, there was no indication of any snipers nor hidden attacks, and even a damned phone call wouldn’t get to that base before I would have. Eliminating him would’ve wasted a lot of that time, would’ve attracted others, would’ve led to resistance, and pushed the objective back even further.”

The mustache’s lips pressed into a grim, unimpressed line. 

“Some ‘demon of Niflheim’,” he scoffed, “taking a damned pussy, pacifist route; overthinking instead of ensuring the mission’s success.”

Safay’s eyes briefly widened, then narrowed with a dangerous, pale green glow. “And the alternative…?”

“You leave no witnesses,” the mustache barked, “and if any ‘resistance’ arises, you hack your way through that, too. If you can’t do that in an efficient manner–”

“So, the point,” Safay interrupted in a level voice, “is that _nothing_  that blocks my path should be left standing.”

“You watch your mouth when you speak to your superior, you little shit,” the mustache growled. “You need to remember your place as Imperial propert–”

His words cut off as a thick surge of blood traveled up his throat and out of his mouth. It stemmed from a sword blade that entered his stomach and angle upward to exit between his shoulders.

“Can you maybe guess what’s cost me the most time on this mission?” Safay asked, his voice quiet and eyes wild. The impaled officer grasped uselessly the sword’s guard, in a greatly weakened attempt to pull the blade free. It didn’t budge Safay’s hand from his torso. “I think you can. But I admit, you have a point. So, I eliminated it.”

Safay moved his mouth closer to the mustache’s ear with a slow, fluid grace.

“And by the way,” he whispered, “don’t you _ever_  let me hear you suggest that what’s between my legs makes me inferior to you, again.”

Wracked with pain and the growing cold of blood loss, the mustache slowly turned toward him. He seemed surprised. Safay shoved him to the ground and allowed gravity to pull the soon-to-be corpse from the sword.

“Oh, wait,” Safay said, as he looked over the sheen of red on the blade, and back down to its unwitting donor, “I guess that won’t be much of an issue now, will it?”

The training program picked up on the presence of blood, and behind Safay, one of the elders screamed. The sounds and shadows of other townsfolk began drawing closer, to investigate the commotion.

“You asshole,” Safay groaned, and looked back to the body lying in the street. “This is exactly what I told you would happen! Shit.”

Safay dismissed the sword in a long, thin cloud of bright violet smoke. He turned for the nearest building and scaled its windowsills, to reach the roof. The young soldier rolled his shoulders inside of a bodysuit of form-fitted black leather panels. Safay moved to the roof’s center, where he’d be hardest to see from the ground, and quickly surveyed for the landmarks he’d been told of by the old man.

Communication antennae on the base’s roof were small, particularly from Safay’s distance, but present. It appeared to be a smaller, rear addition to a church. Crafty.

The soldier dug his foot into the coarse roofing, and leaped for the next roof closer. He’d barely landed on it before pushing off to jump for the next, and the next. His silver hair and black body armor weren’t doing him any favors of stealth in the simulated afternoon sun, but his speed and momentum would make up for any lack of surprise.

Nearing his target, Safay summoned the sword back to his waiting left hand, and made one last leap for the addition’s steel door. The okatana's blade came down in an almost horizontal slice, breaching the door’s entire thickness an instant before his outstretched right leg battered through the cleft halves.

The dust of shattered plaster and sudden darkness of the interior clouded visibility inside of the main room. Safay’s feline pupils blew open into wide, black circles that all but obliterated the green of his irises, in compensation. The shapes of arms raising rifles were easy enough to make out, detail or no, and Safay struck out with an arc of sharpened steel. Pained cries and the clattering of heavy metal hitting the wooden floorboards rang out. The click of a smaller gun being primed caught Safay’s ear, and he turned with the shining blade leading the motion. He caught a wrist, severed it, and knocked its former owner’s back against a console.

Safay pinned the militant there, his breathing deep and visibly excited, but not hard enough that he couldn’t keep it silent as he listened for any further hints of ambush. When there weren’t any further signs of danger, he wet his lips and smiled at his captive.

“ _Tag.”_

The captive’s face went neutral, glitched, and disintegrated into static. Safay sighed. He straightened and slowly rolled his head side to side, provoking a pop of his neck each time. The base faded away, just as the operative had, and a shockwave of disintegration rippled through the rest of the town. Where it should have stretched on into miles of rolling countryside, the illusion hit against circular walls and vanished. In a now-exposed archway, Verstael looked on with his usual unpleasant grin. Beside him, Hojo held a clipboard and his usual absence of amusement. The exercise was over.

Halfway between Safay and the exit into the complex of laboratories within the Zegnautus Keep, lying on the flat, bare metal floor, a mustache peeked out from the bottom edge of a Niflheim helmet, connected to a now very dead body. _That_ , Safay was going to hear about for a long time to come.


End file.
